To help contribute, here’s the only meme I’ve ever done, which I did in response to news that Abrams was working on a new ST movie. And after seeing how well the franchise is going with SNW and LD, I feel it’s even more appropriate.
What’s annoying is that he’s good at pacing and creating intrigue. He just never knows how stick the landing without turning the plot into swiss cheese.
Jorge is a fantastically creative guy. He needs limitations on that creativity, but he is undeniably a foundation of ideas.
JJ Abrams mostly regurgitates without having any truly unique ideas. Anything unique he does have is either a subversion or an unfinished mystery concept that’s film student tier. Especially in Star Wars and Trek, he took a bunch of the most surface level aspects from the franchises and threw them in without really doing anything with them.
What’s even funnier is when he tells how he came up with his “mystery box” method. He tries to play it off as some kind of profound insightful story from his childhood about magic shops. But then he explains it as the magic shops would package the junk that didn’t sell into an unmarked “mystery box” to create intrigue which duped people into buying it. He outright admits he’s selling junk
I’ll add that this didn’t start with the SW prequel movies either. The various essays on the topic typically focus on The Phantom Menace to make this case (see: Red Letter Media); we do love to hate on that movie. But if you look to early drafts of the very first Star Wars movie script, it’s clear that it took a village to make it more than B-movie material. Also, the making-of stories are complete with every kind of move-making person improving and adding to our producer’s vision, right down to salvaging the whole mess in the editing room. It’s been a problem the entire time.
Now I wonder if THX-1138 and American Graffiti have similar war-stories behind them.
Basically, writing movies like running a 100% improvised DnD campaign. Which is to say it’s great, as long as your audience signed up for repeated intellectual kicks to the groin.
I don’t mind the Kelvin movies too much. Actively enjoy them for the most part. But JJ was definitely the worst part of those movies by far and I completely agree with the meme. You can feel the love of everyone bleeding through despite him, not because of him. So many people worked on those movies who were huge fans of Trek and then he has the nerve to openly talk about how he isn’t a fan of Star Trek.
Beyond is my favorite of the Kelvin movies and, what do you know, JJ didn’t direct it. Funny that.
I didn’t hate the Kelvin movies, aesthetically though they were trash in that they took a scifi franchise known for inspiring good UI design and expanded upon it with absolutely horrendous UI. Seriously the computers and interiors of those ships are so ugly it hurts.
Also, starfleet felt WAYYYYYYY too much like a military for me in those movies, there was no attempt to differentiate starfleet from a direct analog to the U.S. military and that just gives me that “kind of want to throw up” feeling every time I see it in star trek.
The part about the visuals of the ships is mostly opinion. I don’t think they’re that ugly.
I mean… there are a lot of differences that separate Starfleet from the US Military. That seems like a bit much. However the militaristic thing in general is completely explained in universe. It’s not just a “Oh, Starfleet is more of a military now!” thing. The Kelvin was rocking along, doing it’s typical stuff, and then suddenly a massive warship with unheard of weaponry shows up and proceeds to obliterate it, killing a massive amount of people and forcing over 800 other people to run for their lives. All in no time at all and within Federation borders. Prime Timeline Starfleet beefed up the military aspect after the Borg and only increased due to the Dominion. Makes a lot of sense to me that they’d step up the militaristic aspect in a universe where a random incursion within their own borders left them completely defenseless. Then 20ish years later, the fleet that was sitting at Earth and is responsible for Earths defense is completely wiped out in less than 10 minutes by that same ship. At that point it would be absolutely idiotic to not have Starfleet be more militaristic.
The man knows how to absolutely decimate a Starfleet vessel. I’m all for bringing him back if he’s just limited to 10 minutes of an unpowered ship tumbling in free fall towards a planet.
Strange New Worlds is much better modern Star Trek, but you can’t say JJ didn’t take advantage of the theatrical scale of things.
Oh absolutely. Visually those movies are stunning. Like yeah, you can argue about plot and what not all you want but the shots of Into Darkness of the Vengeance sliding across San Francisco? Absolutely fucking amazing. And that shot of the Enterprise on a death spiral through the sky before the camera stops and you see the Enterprise slowly rise through the clouds? I have goosebumps thinking about it. I’m gonna need to rewatch that scene again.
Beyond has one of my favorite ship destruction sequences in all of Star Trek. Just the glory of the Enterprise cruising through space before having its throat unceremoniously slit was… Honestly it was a gut punch. Then seeing the saucer section bashing through mountains before crashing to a stop? FUCK! Not to mention the follow-up scene of reactivating the thrusters and causing the saucer to flip over.
Honestly the visuals are a huge reason as to why I enjoy the movie so much.
I like this take. Use him like you’d use a stunt coordinator, or a pyrotechnics specialist. Have a complex action scene that needs to convey action, chaos, high-stakes, and fireballs, for 12 straight minutes? He’s your guy.
Abrams’ “additions” to the Star Wars setting drove me back to learning about what the Old Republic era was all about; I’m so sorry y’all had to deal with him too.
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